Plusnet Usergroup

All Users - The Open Forum => Announcements => Topic started by: lmartin on April 11, 2007, 08:12:45 am

We are pleased to announce that the future of Broadband arrived this morning in the form of ‘Broadband Your Way’. Broadband Your Way replaces our existing product set for all new PlusNet, Force9 and Free-Online customers. Existing customers will be able to remain on their current products, but as of this morning our previous products have all been withdrawn from sale.

Four OptionsOur new offering, Broadband Your Way, is available in 4 base options with included allowances as follows :

You can choose to have your Broadband Your Way as a fixed price product, or you can opt to bolt on extra usage. If you want extra usage, then you can opt to pre-pay for it at a cost of 75p per GB per month, or post-pay at £1.00 per GB – once you have hit your included allowance. If you don’t wish to post-pay for usage, or don’t add any pre-paid extra usage, then your broadband speeds will be restricted to 128kbps once you hit your monthly usage allowance and have used any pre-paid extra usage.

If you’ve configured your Broadband Your Way to post-pay extra GB’s, then we have adapted the ‘Data Transfer Watch’ tool to enable you to set a maximum price that you would like to pay. Once this is reached, we will stop adding extra usage blocks and your speeds will instead be reduced across the board to 128kbps. This enables you to continue to use your Broadband connection, but at a reduced speed until a new billing month starts.

Usage is counted between the hours of 8:00am and Midnight every day and includes both Uploads and Downloads. Outside of these hours usage is free of charge and not taken from your usage allowance. All usage allowances and pre/post-pay extra usage is calculated by billing month and is reset on your billing date.

Product FeaturesBroadband Your Way is provided with speeds of ‘Up to 8Mb’ and is based on a Monthly Contract.

The new product includes all the popular product features as our Broadband Premier and Pay As You Go products used to. The following are just some of the features included at no extra cost in your monthly subscription:-- Broadband Firewall- Unlimited Email addresses- Anti-Virus and Spam Detection on Email- Included Broadband Phone minutes- 250MB Webspace with 250MB daily traffic allowance- MySQL Database Hosting- CGI Server Hosting- FrontPage Extensions- Ability to host up to 5 domains- Text Usenet Access- 0808 Free Dialup if you open a Broadband Fault

You can view the full list of features here:- http://www.plus.net/residential/broadband/broadband_home_features.shtml

Broadband Your Way comes with a Dynamic IP address by default, but with the ability to enable a Static IP at no extra cost. If you do not know what a Static IP is, it is likely you do not need one. A Static IP can be activated at any time, via the Member Centre. Customers moving onto Broadband Your Way from a current product with a Static IP will retain it following the change of product.

Product ChangesGoing forwards, all new signups will be onto a Broadband Your Way option. We will make no charges for you to more to Broadband Your Way. Once on Broadband Your Way, you can change your included allowances or switch options once a month without incurring any downgrade charges.

Broadband Your Way on our Broadband NetworkWe’ve updated our Help and Support pages with more information than ever before on how we manage these products on our network. We prioritise traffic differently on the different options.

For information on how you can expect Broadband Your Way to perform, see the following information :

Free Setup Offer EvolvedThe hardware provided with our Free Setup option is changing. Customers signing up to Options 1 or 2 can order a 1 Port router, whilst signups to Options 3 or 4 can get a Wireless Router. There is no charge for this hardware or activation if the customer is with us for 12 months or more. Broadband Your Way is a monthly contract product, so customers can choose to repay us for the hardware and activation and leave without any penalties.

Broadband Your Way – what’s next?This is just the start of Broadband Your Way. Our intention is to constantly evolve Broadband Your Way with new features, management tools and additional services. The next features we'll launch include: • A 'speed boost' facility to deliver a 5-star experience for downloads• A BT Home Hub hardware option • Bundled WiFi minutes with BT Openzone• Improvements and enhancements to the 'Broadband Your Way Control Panel'• Sliding-scale referral values based on the amount you spend

Geographical SupportIn response to feedback from the PlusNet Usergroup and following discussions at our Customer Open Day, we are pleased to announce that we will be launching a geographical number to contact support in May. This will allow many customers to benefit from using their inclusive minutes in their home or mobile phone packages if they need to contact us.More informationWe’ll be emailing all our customers over the next week informing them of these new products now available to them. For more information about our Broadband Your Way products, see the product pages on our website, here:-http://www.plus.net/residential/broadband/

FAQ

We will keep an updated FAQ with questions from the Community on our Community Site Blog at : http://community.plus.net/comms/2007/04/11/broadband-your-way-faq/

If the maximum speeds are to be as stated in the link I am appalled - this is nearly going back to dialup for anything except normal browsing. I for one will not be touching it with a bargepole - I will stick with my PAYG 4GB included Just to add - how can FTP and download sites be classed as gold with these expected speeds.Are there two different golds - PAYG and the new product

Hmmm, I agree with Oldjim. I thought this was a great opportunity to tweak the product - I could either save a couple of quid a month, or get some more data down the pipe during 'working hours'. I guess that'd be okay if I was happy to sit and watch paint dry. The transfer speeds as marked for option 1 and 2 are pathetic. And why would I want to pay more per month to get the speeds I'm getting now?

Or - and here's the worry - is traffic shaping being applied to *all* accounts as we speak?

these are included on all ? makes no sense; Unlimited email addresses, for option one would be pointless, even 25 would be excessive, your just asking people to hammer the email platform :roll:

Webspace, should be added as an extra, even then it should be plain old html only sort, and you should have to pay more for PHP, MySQL and others, same goes with CGI and Frontpage extensions.

host up to 5 domains ? on option 1 ? really... :roll:

Text Usenet Access, this is where i guess i am going to say something PN wont like, as they are wholesaling their text service, what a waste of money... seriously, Anyone who 'knows' what usenet is, and wants to use the text can Pay themselves for this "service" from PN, why should everyone else have to pay for it.

The Speeds on the "new" product is pathetic, the fact you cant buy the old products along-side it is another downside, as your stuck with these pre-defined choices.

Not happy about the fact that "peak" usage has moved times (again!).

Put it this way, if the products dont get some tweaking 1) customers are not going to like these restrictions, come on lets face it, Option 1/2 customers might aswell sign up with Sky BB for £5 a month and get no restrictions bar a total usage cap. 2) Your gonna get alot less "referrals" which are PN's aparently "Preferred" method of advertising, at a time when im sure referrals are low due to the recent "Issues" :roll:

About the best bit of the products is the 'price' of extra GB. The usage for option 4 is OK, although abit costly still.

It depends on your interpretation of "maximum speed" for the protocol. To my mind that means none of the protocols listed in the table will exceed those stated numbers at any time. Ironically this means there is little point in having a line speed >1M unless you use it in the middle of the night.

OTOH, if you mean "we don't guarantee to maintain a speed above these numbers" then it's not so bad - though that would be more like what I'd call "minimum speed".

Now, what existing customers would like to know is: Can we have a table like that for legacy products please? On my legacy PAYG account, what "maximum" (whatever it means) speeds on those protocols can I expect to see? What precious metal queues is my traffic in?

In other words, how would I know if I'd like to move to new products, or recommend someone for them, based on past experience?

Having just got back in and had a bit more time to study the new packages and also to look back at all the previous explanations about product design I totally fail to understand the rationale for the new products.We now have products which even if used at 50% of the stated capacity are not viable given the cost of provision by BTw.As a comparison PAYG which has the same peak time as the new products only gives 2GB for £14.99 whereas the new option 2 gives 8GB in the same period. If the upcoming 5 star service (I assume equivalent to the present PAYG) is not priced the same as PAYG then the day that PlusNet withdraw or restrict the present PAYG product is the day I seriously consider applying for my MAC.

Having just got back in and had a bit more time to study the new packages and also to look back at all the previous explanations about product design I totally fail to understand the rationale for the new products.We now have products which even if used at 50% of the stated capacity are not viable given the cost of provision by BTw.As a comparison PAYG which has the same peak time as the new products only gives 2GB for £14.99 whereas the new option 2 gives 8GB in the same period. If the upcoming 5 star service (I assume equivalent to the present PAYG) is not priced the same as PAYG then the day that PlusNet withdraw or restrict the present PAYG product is the day I seriously consider applying for my MAC.

Where to start...

The product rationale is the same. The new products are based on us forward pricing to the upcoming BT Central cost changes. I don't want to hype it too much, but I'm planning to write an explanation of the product design behind BBYW this week. It is certainly sustainable, especially when you bear in mind the protocols which don't get line speed (and so don't drive up the overall capacity requirement) at peak times.

PAYG won't be withdrawn, but the fact is that it's not a product desing that would work if you put everyone on it.

It depends on your interpretation of "maximum speed" for the protocol. To my mind that means none of the protocols listed in the table will exceed those stated numbers at any time. Ironically this means there is little point in having a line speed >1M unless you use it in the middle of the night.

OTOH, if you mean "we don't guarantee to maintain a speed above these numbers" then it's not so bad - though that would be more like what I'd call "minimum speed".

Now, what existing customers would like to know is: Can we have a table like that for legacy products please? On my legacy PAYG account, what "maximum" (whatever it means) speeds on those protocols can I expect to see? What precious metal queues is my traffic in?

In other words, how would I know if I'd like to move to new products, or recommend someone for them, based on past experience?

Yes - The table showing the comparison of BBYW with Plus and Premier speeds should be published tomorrow. A lot of people had to work through the bank holiday to deliver BBYW on time, and we just didn't get chance to do commit that page before the roll-out.

The speeds listed are what we'd expect to be able to deliver, but you are not going to get faster for File Sharing / Binary Usenet / FTP at this point.

Frankly, I don't buy that only those applications benefit from a faster connection. Think about things like video, use of which is growing rapidly and which is already being used by a lot more people than those who use P2P or Binary Usenet regularily. Add a couple of things - Streaming radio in the kitchen and a gamer upstairs perhaps, and I can quite imagine the need for your connection to have some power.

Especially with sites like Joost coming to the mainstream, 'rich media' (Or whatever we call it this week) demand can only be expected to grow, and as it does I think we'll see what happens at other ISPs who don't have some of those protocols under control.

We don't want to punish downloaders, and we will soon have product options that I think will work even for people that don't mind paying a bit more so they can drive their Range Rovers at top whack around the M25 at rush hour. I'm not under any illusions - having seen the speed average usage is growing across the board on uncapped networks, I'm convinced the reasons why our approach is better will soon become apparant, even if they aren't to everyone now.

these are included on all ? makes no sense; Unlimited email addresses, for option one would be pointless, even 25 would be excessive, your just asking people to hammer the email platform rolleyes

Webspace, should be added as an extra, even then it should be plain old html only sort, and you should have to pay more for PHP, MySQL and others, same goes with CGI and Frontpage extensions.

host up to 5 domains ? on option 1 ? really... rolleyes

Text Usenet Access, this is where i guess i am going to say something PN wont like, as they are wholesaling their text service, what a waste of money... seriously, Anyone who 'knows' what usenet is, and wants to use the text can Pay themselves for this "service" from PN, why should everyone else have to pay for it.

All of the above make up in the region of between 35p and 50p for each subscription. We'd have to run the services to similar standards even without lots of people using them, and we'd lose a big USP if we charged a few quid a month for all the above.

Would you honestly swap all the stuff we can give to everyone as a value add, for a 50p cost reduction on each product?

So "Peak" as such is now 8am to Midnight every day and for Premier prices you can get 22Gb usage per month on a product that gives you more than that (supposedly) in less hours (4pm-midnight)

Really poor move - I'd love to know the discussion that went on within PUG about this as I know for a fact I'd have screamed about this one.

It has been discussed a few times in the past Mike. We've definately moved away from the idea of there being a 'peak' time now - The network is always going to be pretty busy and we could add a couple of Centrals tomorrow without that changing much. The usage allowance lets us offer the hybrid between a usage allowance and payed for usage, which was one of the biggest things people asked for (See the list of questions we were asked, and the answers here (http://community.plus.net/comms/2007/04/11/bbyw-the-questions-we-were-asked/). It's also not far off what everyone else does, and from that point of view it makes our products easier to understand for people (I think the press coverage of BBYW so also backs that up!).

I do need to check how we handle Joost, but that's an example of a service many thousands more people than use P2P could demand 'just works', and it's the sort of content I believe we have to be able to deliver in order to ensure customers don't get severly annoyed with their connections over the next 6-12 months.

Hmmm, I agree with Oldjim. I thought this was a great opportunity to tweak the product - I could either save a couple of quid a month, or get some more data down the pipe during 'working hours'. I guess that'd be okay if I was happy to sit and watch paint dry. The transfer speeds as marked for option 1 and 2 are pathetic. And why would I want to pay more per month to get the speeds I'm getting now?

Or - and here's the worry - is traffic shaping being applied to *all* accounts as we speak?

Absolutely - Traffic management has been in place for 18 months, and we've not hidden from that. It's changed a lot through time and it's the fact that customers haven't understood what the grander plan is, what they can expect, and why we do it that must go down as one of our greatest failings.

Hmmm, I agree with Oldjim. I thought this was a great opportunity to tweak the product - I could either save a couple of quid a month, or get some more data down the pipe during 'working hours'. I guess that'd be okay if I was happy to sit and watch paint dry. The transfer speeds as marked for option 1 and 2 are pathetic. And why would I want to pay more per month to get the speeds I'm getting now?

Or - and here's the worry - is traffic shaping being applied to *all* accounts as we speak?

Absolutely - Traffic management has been in place for more than 18 months, and we've not hidden from that. It's changed a lot through time and it's the fact that customers haven't understood what the grander plan is, what they can expect, and why we do it that must go down as one of our greatest failings.

Yes - The table showing the comparison of BBYW with Plus and Premier speeds should be published tomorrow.

Ah, thanks. Should be interesting!

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The speeds listed are what we'd expect to be able to deliver, but you are not going to get faster for File Sharing / Binary Usenet / FTP at this point.

Frankly, I don't buy that only those applications benefit from a faster connection.

Hm, perhaps we are at cross purposes. Are you saying that most web downloads (e.g. driver software, programs, virus killer updates, etc) will NOT be restricted, and that only certain web SITES will be restricted?

I can understand P2P being throttled, although sub-512k is a bit of a joke. Same for FTP speeds if regular external site maintenance is a desired use.

Quote

having seen the speed average usage is growing across the board on uncapped networks, I'm convinced the reasons why our approach is better will soon become apparant, even if they aren't to everyone now.

I am entirely in agreement that some sort of QoS controls need to be in place instead of a free-for-all. It just needs to give the Q to the particular S that the customer wants. Part of the point of the (old) PAYG product was you could more or less have what you wanted all the time because it was being paid for.

In terms of FTP, regular site maintenance on an FTP site other than ours frp, a residential connection is pretty rare, and the speeds don;t make that impossible. The problem is, FTP is a protocol heavily used by leechers too, and we had to make a call on this. The exposure from FTP to us is pretty big if left uncontrolled.

And can you just try asking your question about sites versus downloads again - I think I understand what you mean, but it's late and I'm tired, so some clarification would help!

Overall, I'd say PN has finally "got it right". It will remain to be seen how close to those upper speed limits users get, but as a past BB+ user, I'd have jumped at the new option 2 offering, given there is a larger allowance, free overnight traffic, and not blocking peer-to-peer or Usenet binaries, compared with the struggle to use Usenet that I had two years ago (I could d/l 50+ GB a month, just got nowhere with Usenet).

Perhaps the most important thing, and something missing from BB+, is that there is clear information about how fast/slow certain protocols might be at different times.

For me, BB+ Usenet binaries were either 'slow' or 'dead slow' (timeouts even in the hours of 02:00 to 05:00). I expect a number of people quit PN before this new account could come into play, which is a shame, but BB+ was outflanked by competitor ISP products, in all honesty.

If someone is using Usenet or peer-to-peer, they might just need to learn a bit more 'start it and leave it run' if they only want to run it from 1600-2200 but outside those hours, things should be peachy, IMHO :)

PAYG won't be withdrawn, but the fact is that it's not a product design that would work if you put everyone on it.

Ian

Ian,That really doesn't make sense - PAYG £14.99 2GB included isn't a viable product design but Option 2 £14.99 8GB included is.Lets ignore P2P etc and just look at normal browsing.In my case the vast majority of my usage would be at full speed on either product so why is PAYG 4GB included at £16.49 less viable than Option 2 8GB included at £14.99

And can you just try asking your question about sites versus downloads again - I think I understand what you mean, but it's late and I'm tired, so some clarification would help!

OK, thanks Ian. I was just having some difficulty clearly understanding the terms like "download server". I am coming round to the idea that you may mean certain servers that specialise in supplying high bandwidth downloads, perhaps like YouTube, as opposed to pretty much any server from which one may be downloading.

Going back a week or two, there was much discussion about "bursty" transfers, and a lot of unresolved arguments about whether higher transfer speeds help or hinder that burstiness. In terms of an average person trawling around the web, downloading emails, etc, what will he see? Everything is a "download", but what about updating a printer or camera driver from the manufacturers website? (e.g. 50MB file) Or a game demo from a games review site like IGN? (e.g. 200MB file) Or a movie trailer? etc.

One of the aspects that I can't quite get my head around with the new product line-up is the way that a user who has paid for just 1GB, and therefore is unlikely to have the use-pattern to be detrimental to the network, is throttled nearly to death, yet a user who has stated up-front his intent to download a lot of stuff is given license to do so at high speed during peak time. Were the 1GB user to pay for more, he would be paying way over the odds per GB by comparison, yet still receive the poorer speed.

You cannot just "ignore" anything, because (elsewhere) questions were raised on the lines of "PAYG seems to solve the problems people have had with throttling, so how about lots of people switching to PAYG... how would it cope..."

AFAICS, the problem for PN would be very much down to either an influx of heavy users or a transfer from Premier of heavy users who could push most traffic overnight, but also run heavily during the evenings, on the basis there's hardly any limiting. That would have an immediate impact on other users too.

Now, I'm a bit curious about whether the 0000-0800 "unaccounted" time slot will work out, my guess is that the really heavy users who want binaries via Usenet or peer-to-peer will time their traffic only to use that slot, and many may switch away from the Premier account. People with some other ISPs might ignore the PN wish for BBYW 1 + 2 for light use/ browsing etc, BBYW 3 + 4 for heavier use and go for the 14.99 BBYW Option 2 account (the way BB+ became the highest account for new use in some of the past 18-20 months, if not the last 4-6).

The overnight traffic will be limited by the contention of users, so if it gets very congested, and they cannot get their 90++ GB a month 'fix' in 'free' time, the heaviest would have options to either shift to another ISP or pay for extra allowance and run 24x7 rather than pushing the load into 8x7. Remember these would likely be paying 14.99 a month 'because they can'.

Around 18 months ago in some other place (perhaps the PN forum) I remember someone, perhaps still a regular, saying about getting 30-40 GB a month on a 14.99 account (when it only included 1 GB). Clearly (to me, and those in the know) this was because the bulk of traffic was overnight, which suited his arrangements, while evenings were spent commenting in a very favourable light about PN while others were moaning about having traffic slowed down. From time to time I commented that this was surely the PAYG account, and traffic had to be confined to overnight, which would not suit everyone's needs (it struck me that this would be the case if their usage was not simply downloading to view / listen / use later) because it was far from clear from the user's posts.

You're a lighter type of user, you want to ignore overnight because it doesn't fit your needs, but when it comes to 'sustainable' for PN, they see a broader range of usage and people looking to return to getting 'unlimited' access for 'peanuts' which is how PAYG and even BBYW Option 2 might be viewed, by those who not only 'can', but 'will' shift the bulk of data in the free, overnight slot. It was the argument raised a few years ago, when "unlimited" was no longer being offered, as network congestion and very high traffic meant that "all you can download" could not work or an ISP could go bust.

Frankly I can see some other options (no quota, but no traffic 0800-1800, for a monthly fee of about 18 quid, from another ISP) might prove more attractive, if webspace and umpteen (probably unused) 'extras' doesn't come into the equation. The account I'm using with another ISP offers 20 GB during their 'peak hours' (6 hours a day) for 14.99 so I'm on an account which may be unsustainable in the long run, if I was to be pushing traffic all night and much of the day, and while the higher (30, 40, 50 GB) options are competitively priced, every ISP must be 'banking' on the fact there are maybe 90% who rarely use more than 5 or 10 GB a month, and they have enough customers paying a regular fee which covers their overall traffic costs.

Some ISPs have had radical rethinks in the recent past (Newnet and Zen, I think) where the fees were changed significantly, and quotas introduced despite past 'unlimited' service. It looks as though a number of others (not necessarily those using LLU, of course) will also be changing their pricing structures, because everything is evolving, not least because of Joost / 4oD / etc.

A year back, when "up to 8 Mbps" was first being widely offered by ISPs using BT Wholesale, NewNet was quick to switch their top account from being 'unlimited' to having a 100 GB limit (http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/i/2570.html) (see "8050U" account listed back on 01 March 2006. They've now moved from 100 to 60 GB and dropped the price a bit (puzzling about what the Home B account actually costs now, as the 32.95 is listed as annual fee divided by 12, but anything other than DD has a 5% surcharge).

@Ultra,If you are going to quote me please don't be selective to justify your point. I was specifically referring to my situation as an average PAYG user who doesn't normally use much , if any, P2P during the paid period.Anyone using P2P on PAYG to any extent will schedule it during the overnight free period just as they would on the new Option 2 product.This then leaves the period between 8.00am to midnight where 8GB on Option 2 is sustainable but 2GB on PAYG is not when both have the same price and similar speeds if only used for normal browsing, . This is the point which PlusNet have, as yet, failed to give a clear answer to.In fact I basically agree with the premise you are putting forward with respect to heavy users and I don't understand the rational of these new products at all. The previously quoted costs by PlusNet reps just do not tie in with the new products. If we remember the row a few months ago when heavy throttling was introduced on BB+ if the user exceeded 2GB. How on earth is 8GB sustainable when the bulk of the usage will still be in the evening peak period.

@Ultra,If you are going to quote me please don't be selective to justify your point. I was specifically referring to my situation as an average PAYG user who doesn't normally use much , if any, P2P during the paid period.Anyone using P2P on PAYG to any extent will schedule it during the overnight free period just as they would on the new Option 2 product.This then leaves the period between 8.00am to midnight where 8GB on Option 2 is sustainable but 2GB on PAYG is not when both have the same price and similar speeds if only used for normal browsing, . This is the point which PlusNet have, as yet, failed to give a clear answer to.In fact I basically agree with the premise you are putting forward with respect to heavy users and I don't understand the rational of these new products at all. The previously quoted costs by PlusNet reps just do not tie in with the new products. If we remember the row a few months ago when heavy throttling was introduced on BB+ if the user exceeded 2GB. How on earth is 8GB sustainable when the bulk of the usage will still be in the evening peak period.

The most important point to bear in mind when thinking about the new design is that BBYW is based on future pricing - Ie the costs we expect to pay BT next year. There is a significant reduction in those costs from today, and until they are applied by BT we'll be taking the hit. We can do that now where we couldn't before for reasons we've already explained. I'm working on a more detailed blog article to explain all this further.

I'm really struggling to understand your point about PAYG here to be honest, The problem is that if *everyone* wanted to use 2GB at full line rate in the evening, that would cost us a hell of a lot more than those customers pay us. If everyone uses 8GB in a more bursty fashion and does not need a guarantee of no drops on the protocols that drive high demand, that costs us less to deliver and we can do it economically.

I know it's hard to get your head round, but the key thing to remember is that our costs are not driven by GB usage from customers, but by the concurrent demand for usage at 'peak' (Ie a notional second in time when our network is busiest). Remember, it only takes 20 customers downloading at top Max line speed to fill an entire 155Mb/s pipe, the wholesale cost of which is currently £1000 a day.

What we are expecting in the next six months is that the take-up of interactive media / streaming / 'rich content' is going to keep grow even faster than the speed it has in the last six months. We need to be in a position to make sure that traffic has priority, because it's when those things don't work that we would be faced with an impossible situation to solve and a lot of very unhappy customers.

What we are expecting in the next six months is that the take-up of interactive media / streaming / 'rich content' is going to keep grow even faster than the speed it has in the last six months. We need to be in a position to make sure that traffic has priority, because it's when those things don't work that we would be faced with an impossible situation to solve and a lot of very unhappy customers.

Does that help make what we are going any clearer?

No. :|

Streaming media-rich applications are going to be a non-bursty high-bandwidth load used primarily at peak time. And you want to prioritise that? Surely a few dozen customers using that facility will completely fill all the pipes? Wasn't that the argument why things like P2P have to be low priority?

And, to repeat a point made earlier, the heaviest users (on the option 3 or 4) are given even more opportunity to soak up peak time bandwidth, while the lightest users (opt 1) are heavily restricted. :?

option 3 + 4 are given a modest opportunity (using FTP / Usenet / peer-to-peer) during the evening, compared with bursty/ 4oD / Joost traffic which anyone (with possible exception of BB+) customers could download in the evenings at higher than 500 kbps - the type of max speed for option 4 for FTP, and 384 kbps for Usenet/peer-to-peer... speeds which have been criticised on ThinkBroadband as being quite restricted (though the clarity aspect appreciated, in the forum).

It makes sense to me for Option 1 + 2 to be on a lower speed if using Usenet binaries/ peer-to-peer, in respect of fee paid, and their overall allowances, else someone could wipe out their 8 GB in 2 weeks, so a small lesson in patience seems good :)

It depends, surely, on how big other 'rich media' streaming / downloading is, and what bandwidth is actually required for it. As a quick test, I started 4oD and streamed a recent "Grand Design" show. It was running at about 12% of my network speed (1200 kbps) and would have been going for about 50 minutes.

Downloading it (350 MB) is estimated by the 4oD tool at 96 minutes but is actually downloading faster than the streaming speed - averaging ~1600 kbps but is more spikey, started at around 22% and is wavering around the 2000 kbps mark, while outgoing traffic (as it's a peer-to-peer system) has increased a touch... My firewall claims I've downloaded around 3 GB using KService (part of the 4oD system) in the last few days, which seems a bit high, to be honest, though I did watch a few items from the last week.

(I had planned to do a streaming / downloading graphic, but was distracted by a phone call, so captured downloading / streaming - actually it was streaming the Gwen Stefani gig, but allows one to compare traffic levels quite well, and was similar to the Grand Design streaming).Anyone wanting can see my Windows Task Manager network report on tinypic.com (http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=2nsus29).

I'm really struggling to understand your point about PAYG here to be honest, The problem is that if *everyone* wanted to use 2GB at full line rate in the evening, that would cost us a hell of a lot more than those customers pay us. If everyone uses 8GB in a more bursty fashion and does not need a guarantee of no drops on the protocols that drive high demand, that costs us less to deliver and we can do it economically.Ian

Unfortunately Ian I don't think you are making a fair comparison - why should you assume that a user on PAYG 2GB included would use the connection in any more intensive or non bursty way than an Option 2 user 8GB included. I would argue exactly the opposite - the amount of continuous downloading you can you can do and stay within a 2GB limit over a month is very limited but with an 8GB limit you have much more scope for pushing the system.The only way your argument stacks up is if the definition of gold on PAYG is wildly different to gold on the new products and hence virtually everything is speed limited from the first MB to the last MB within the 8GB allowance.With respect to the new costings from BTw - I have been following your discussions on this subject on TBB and the savings just aren't big enough to justify the increase in usage allowance and in any case that saving would apply equally to PAYG.

So are you saying we should sell a product which we know we can't deliver if more than x% try to (quite reasonably) use the available resource (at full line speed - PAYG) at the same time?

We've said that having all customers on PAYG with all traffic in Gold wouldn't work. You're making an assumption that it would based on your suggesting that not all customers actually would use it at the same time. But we would be advertising and selling a product which we would know we can't deliver fairly if everyone used it to the max.

Broadband Your Way makes it as fair as possible, and is a product that we can actually deliver as specified.

I am not saying that. I was suggesting the opposite that the new products aren't viable if PAYG isn't viable but your explanation makes it quite clear - on the new products all gold protocols are throttled to some extent which means that the only unshaped protocols are voip and gaming. Whereas on PAYG everything is gold and is not throttled.In comparing the tables on the two links in the announcement - we have gold traffic rate limited to 256 kbps at peak times - I don't class that speed as gold (iron pyrites maybe but not gold)

That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that we could not justify having heavy-download applications such as P2P / USENET in Gold (such as they are for PAYG), for everyone, at peak times without there being a very large cost associated.

Sorry if I misrepresented what you meant but if we look back a few months when BB+ at £14.99 was being heavily restricted once you exceeded 2GB usage, even though P2P and Usenet were effectively blocked on that product, on the basis that the money paid only allowed about 1.5GB of usage. The changes in BTw costs are not significant enough to allow the sort of allowances we have in the new products. This is what was said by PlusNet a couple of months ago.

Quote

Based on an assumed wholesale cost of 70p per GB, the table shows that the amount of budgeted bandwidth per product differs significantly between Broadband Plus (£14.99) and Broadband Premier (£21.99). Broadband Plus is assigned roughly 1.5GB, whereas Broadband Premier is built for around 7GB per customer. (Both figures assume that usage is spread evenly across the peak period during the month).

We now have allowed usage of 8GB for £14.99 and £19.99 for 20GB and even allowing for doubling of peak times it really doesn't make sense to me.

A friend's parents are using the Eclipse Evolution 14.99 account which has an allowance of 20 GB during 'peak hours' (1800-0000) and a fair use policy (clear as mud, I know). Eclipse gets poor ratings (alongside PN, incidentally) on DSLZoneUK (http://www.dslzoneuk.net/) but their next account up, at 19.99, has peak hours limit of 30 GB, while their 29.99 account (level 4) has a 50 GB allowance... all are /plus/ the FUP "do what you want" rule for 0000-1800 each day...

Many will comment that such an account is unsustainable, but it's presumably down to the limited numbers who use these accounts to anything like 50% let alone 90% of their limits.

Entanet resellers are currently charging 19.99 to give 30 GB a month during peak hours (daytime to 2200, I think, without checking), and Entanet's 4th 622 Mbps pipe went live yesterday, with the next due in June.

I'm guessing that either there's a bit of contention overnight (when the 300+ GB limits are in place) or there's some speed throttling during the evenings, or there's a big chunk paid by business for fast daytime access and that's paying to cover the rest.

It's clearly a big juggling act when it comes to the numbers, how much BTW charges and how much the ISPs charge users, so there are some profits rather than losses, but it seems to me there are more light users paying a bit more than they need, while heavy users are not yet forcing all ISPs into the red, but could face contention if they tried to...

Well, they are committing to spend a lot more with us - That means we can plan our capacity needs, which adds a significant 'value' to the customer for us. The higher committed spend the more we can plan for in terms of concurrent capacity, which is why higher paying subscribers get faster speeds. Can you see why that is, or do I need to try and explain further?

We have been preparing for the time when Interactive traffic really explodes for a while now - We certainly see that as already started to happen, but I don't think we've seen anything yet. The fact is that many many customers will demand, rightfully, that this stuff works properly - They won't put up with having to wait like you can with a P2P or Usenet download. There will of course need to be more capacity too, and BBYW has been designed to see us and our customers right for forseeable future (Which in this industry can't possibly be expected to be more than a year!). The old product design wouldn't have coped with a usage explosion, and the product designs in use at many other ISPs also won't. We have an answer to questions that not many people are asking yet. For us that represents a short term problem, but for many others it's going to become a long term one without an answer from their current suppliers.

:? To assist those of us who do use plusnet a lot, and cannot see the point of changing. Could you add to our current daily usage tables the amount of usage we are currently using between 8 am and 4 pm (currently part of the off peak figure)Thus Giving us an analysys of our individual usage ofPeak (4pm -midnight), Off peak Midnight to 8 a.m and off peak (Day) 8 am to 4 pm the time which will under the new regime become Peak, and which currently appears to me to be fairly heavily restricted for P2P! Giving us 3 totals to work with!

I've already answered this a few time - Tis the trouble with so many forums!

We'll absolutely provide the info for 8AM - 4PM usage via VMBU, and it's been specified as a requirement for the next phase of the Broadband Your Way product. Development of that is due to start next week, and while it's not something we can provide instantly, we certainly recognise that it's important information fot some people who are considering whether to change.

Sorry for resurrecting ye olde thread but just starting doing a lil research on what packages are available these days and actually got round to reading all about the shiny new(ish) PN deals. Hmmmmm, interesting, and probably explains why I've had that rather strange feeling of being taken from behind for quite a while now :o

Things I occasionally do: Streaming (youtube and sometimes other similar video stuff but nothing huge or frequent, audio), http/ftp file DL (SW/AV updates, Linux ISOs, maybe a few other bits and pieces but again nothing huge or frequent).

Things I do: www, text Usenet and e-mail.

Things I do use: webspace, webstat logs, fax2email.

So I'm currently on Premier #1 with a 2Mb fixed connection - I saw no point in 'upgrading' to an upto 8Mb connection only to get upto what I was already getting (which is generally nowhere near 2Mb) but with all the potential added hassle ! Why Premier ? God knows really ! But that's what it's always been following some previous package changes but at £22/m it's looking even more of a raw deal now than it ever seemed before esp considering that streaming, DLs and ftp etc. rarely get close to a decent or often even a usable rate these days. Also, as I tend to do a lot of normal stuff at stupid o'clock, the nighttime mega-DLers often manage to screw that up for me bigtime by stealing my share of the paid BW for their (excessive) free use !

Never used to have probs with speeds and performance at all but since the big problems last year, it's been more than a bit poor most of the time. Had been contemplating PAYG for ages but from reading reports in forums various, it really didn't seem that things were that much better at the time either TBH. My usage has typically been around 3-5GB (with roughly 50:50 peak:offpeak) but more recently has only been 1-2GB total. The higher figures have generally been because of the need to repeat large iso DLs or streaming stuff several times due to them giving up part way through rather than actually DLing more useful stuff. In other words, increased BW usage due to PN problems various.

There are only 3 things that have kept me here for the last 10 years: No particularly serious connection problems, not wanting to change e-mail addresses and the fax2email facility. With the current spamfest that I now have the pleasure of dealing with after being totally spam free until now plus the fact that the new offerings don't appear to include fax2email, I think PN has just made the decision for me ! They can no longer reliably offer me the service(s) I use at a price that is competitive :( In principle, it would appear that I'm paying 1.5 - 2 times what is necessary and having now established that I feel even less happy than I was before needless to say.

If I was getting excellent performance and service for the extra do$h then maybe it would be justified but that simply isn't the case. e-mail has been more than a bit dodgy for ages although was improving but now I'm faced with losing all my e-mail addresses. Webstats are unreliable and have been for ages. Usenet is not exactly good and I don't expect significant benefit when it's out-sourced. Transfer rates in general are very variable and not particularly good most of the time either. Now I find that if I want to reduce costs to a realistic and competitive level then I lose fax2email.

So, are there any redeeming features of the latest offerings (for me) or any other good reasons to stay with PN now that I've been forced into a position to consider how to move forward after the security breach ? Also, can someone please confirm that fax2email has indeed been dropped rather than simply not mentioned in the blurb ? I've paid far more than my fair share of the mega-DLers BW for way too long now and suffered accordingly with poor performance so it's decision time. Is there a PN option for me ?

FWIW, I also agree with comments already made and don't really see how the new limits are more sustainable than the previous packages. I can't see how it stacks up at all but it presumably explains why my transfer rates and general performance declined suddenly last year and didn't really recover to those regularly and reliably achieved before that. I guess it also explains why a variety of questions raised on here at the time (in respect of individual site throttling and so on) didn't get answered. I can't see the new offerings with whatever the new throttling scheme is (or will be in reality) bringing an improvement to speeds I've been getting either and would expect them to be worse if anything. I dread to think just how useless it will be trying to do anything a bit 'old school' so to speak when everyone else is DLing vids or whatever 99% of the time !

Now I find that if I want to reduce costs to a realistic and competitive level then I lose fax2email.

AFAIK if you are moving from a legacy product that had fax2email you can raise a ticket requesting to keep it if you move onto one of the BBYW products. In answer to your next question, no I don't know why they decided to drop it from the new packages but let old users keep it, unless they are planning to reintroduce it later as an addon service new users will have to pay for.

It does cost PN to keep a range of numbers for fax2email and they are in short supply. I guess they don't want to compound the problem by allowing a whole new group of users attracted by the new BBYW products to start requesting fax numbers as well.

I'm sure there are quite a few numbers that are not actually used now but people don't want to loose them so send text faxes once a month.

AFAIK if you are moving from a legacy product that had fax2email you can raise a ticket requesting to keep it if you move onto one of the BBYW products.

OK, thanks for that lil snippet of handy rumour :) I guess I need to ask formally and see what the response is ... although having sort of been down this route before when changing A/C types, I'm not so sure that I will be quite so quick to believe the answer if it is along the lines of "yes, no probs at all, of course you can retain the service/number".

I have various e-mails on file telling me that when I moved from an F9 to PN A/C years ago, this, that and the other would be retained and there would be absolutely no problems whatsoever etc. How wrong that was and how stupid of me to take one set of official words at face-value rather asking several people several times !!!! Changing e-mail addresses and fax2email numbers that have been in near constant use for 10 years is a right PITA and no easy task seeing that this info has been used all over the world on personal/business documents, stationary and communications various. If these are going to have to change then I might just as well consider ALL the options - a little change is just as much of a pain as a big change and all that.

I'm sure there are quite a few numbers that are not actually used now but people don't want to loose them so send text faxes once a month.

Yup, I'm sure there are and sometimes that includes me if it hasn't been used in anger by someone else. But having used the service for absolutely ages, it is now a bit of security issue losing the number and potentially getting personal communications sent elsewhere. If the service wasn't sustainable then it simply shouldn't been introduced and promoted as it was. There appear to be several other independent providers that offer similar schemes (both free and paid for) so it's obviously not a possible problem unique to PN either. This does of course mean that it's no longer an essential feature from my ISP tho - as I said before, a small change is just as much of a pain as a big one - so barring the security implications, changing fax number is not so much of an issue this time as I almost certainly need to change e-mail addresses sooner rather than later.

Quoting one of IanW's comments above altho somewhat out of context I would agree, I want a service that "just works": no significant hassle, no significant problems, no significant restrictions etc. plus I want to pay a realistic amount for it and I want to use it responsibly. I've had more than enough of sharing my connection with what appears to be a vast majority of irresponsible b*ggers who see any cap/limit/threshold as some form of challenge or minimum figure, those who click on anything/everything and DL it for the sake of it and those who are trying to DL 24/7 for whatever (sad) reason they might have. It also p*sses me right off that often using my paid-for usage in the free period means that I often enjoy an iffy service.

I want a service that works when I want it and for what I happen to want it for (within reason, of course). I want to "take control" and have "Broadband MY way" as now advertised and as discussed on here at length previously but it doesn't appear to deliver. Where is the "you will be able to pay for or set higher priority for certain activities as/when you need them" that I seem to recall reading discussions on ? Unless I pay for P2P that I don't ever want to use then essentially I can't ever use ftp for instance. Why can I NOT have p2p but be able to use ftp at a realistic and usable rate occasionally ? Also, quoting max rates is fine but what exactly is the 'realistic' or min figures being achieved by users on the new profiles ? I take it that 'max' means the absolute best that you're ever likely to achieve with a following wind if no one else is using the network so, realistically, what, maybe half of the quoted figures at best and usually very much less in reality ? If I wanted a dial-up standard service then I would use dial-up and not BB ;)

If I stumble across a document I want to read, a SW demo I want to try out or a vid I want to watch or DL then I want it in a reasonable time-frame (i.e. while I wait) not to have to plan it hours/days in advance, see it trickle in at bits/sec rather than bytes/sec or have to DL it 'n' times over because it keeps getting spiked and therefore gives up. Planning is fine if it's a whole set of iso files or something but not for random stuff. Somebody somewhere must offer a service where 'responsible' users can use the service 'responsibly' and more to the point use the BW they pay for as and when they choose or need to ! As always, recommendations for any ISP that completely bars p2p and other similar high BW waste of time and space protocols/usage anywhere on their network would be gratefully received :roll:

I just moved from BB Plus to BBYW1 with 2Gb. I didn't have Fax2Email with BB Plus but after moving to BBYW1 at the end of last week a Fax2Email configuration button has appeared on my settings. I don't plan to use it but it is obviously available. :-)

AFAIK if you are moving from a legacy product that had fax2email you can raise a ticket requesting to keep it if you move onto one of the BBYW products.

OK, thanks for that lil snippet of handy rumour :) I guess I need to ask formally and see what the response is ... although having sort of been down this route before when changing A/C types, I'm not so sure that I will be quite so quick to believe the answer if it is along the lines of "yes, no probs at all, of course you can retain the service/number".

You may wish to check out this little bit of info in the PN problem tracker, seems you don't have to raise a ticket anymore. Linky (http://www.plus.net/support/service/problems/problem.php?intProblemId=41959)

If you've already got a Fax2email number then this will be retained automatically if you switch to BBYW. I don't see any change happening with Fax2email. The 0870 numbers were picked mainly because we can point all the numbers at one (or a couple) of geographic numbers and not have to have one geographic number per fax number. The fax software then knows which email address to send the fax to based on the number called. I don't see any reason why this would change, any revenue earned from people calling the 0870 numbers would easily be outweighed by the cost of changing the numbers.

Point is, when the amount charged for calling 0870 is reduced there may be close to no revenue from such calls. It was less clear (before your response) as to how things are set up for PN to offer this facility - clearly any revenue may drop to nil, but it is an in-house system, and not 'bought in' from someone else, which could have led to increased costs (eg if some other firm was providing it, solely on income from the call charges, they may have wanted compensation for the drop in income... it's what I'm expecting to happen with some of the other firms offering such numbers for free, at present, but I don't know what they might want to charge... seems like a time for a strong 'shake up' of 0870-based services)

Thanks for clarifying how your setup is handled... If someone on BBYW wanted a fax - to- e-mail number, would they need to have (say) an 'Essential' account as well (and if so, would it need to have a different account name)... or has the idea been to quietly drop that bit as part of the service (ignoring legacy account holders/ switchers to BBYW) ?

I remember not that long ago when you were unable to offer numbers, and had no idea of when that would be reversed (OK, it was around 4 years ago, but it seemed a bit underhand to list it as part of the account benefits while also being unable to supply it, and not reporting that until someone requested that it be enabled for their account). Presumably that period was when the recycling of {unused} numbers was pushed into action, even if it had been included in the 'small print' beforehand...

I didn't have Fax2Email with BB Plus but after moving to BBYW1 at the end of last week a Fax2Email configuration button has appeared on my settings.

Ditto with my account going from PAYG to BBYW2. As a check, I just set up fax2email under BBYW2 and it went through OK.

For the OP (who seems to have a similar usage profile to me), I guess either BBYW1 or 2 should do. In the event, AFAIK it is possible to switch between them without additonal cost at a later date if the chosen one isn't suitable.

If you were on BBYW and wanted Fax2email then yes you would need to signup for a new account such as an Essential account that offered Fax2email with a new username, or upgrade to say a business broadband account.

There's only a limited number of Fax2email numbers available, as has been evident by us having to reclaim numbers not used for 3 months.